Comment by dogma1138 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dogma1138 | Hacker News Reader

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But that puts it under espionage not "whistleblowing", we don't call a N. Korean scientist that defected to the west who spills light on N. Korea's nuclear program a whistleblower, we call him a defector and a spy.

Intelligence Agencies act on the behalf of their respective nations, there is nothing surprising about the US spying on the EU and vice versa.

As we already know the extent of the collection programmes the NSA operates i really do not see any real value in spewing more and more content about it, especially things that start to touch on the operational know-how of such programmes.

As much as we don't like the Americans spying on us there are far worse nations out there that i would actually fear if they will ever gain even a shred of the capabilities the NSA and some other western allied nations have.

Sadly this incident will be a very bad thing to whistleblowing in the long run, good luck passing any whistleblowing protection laws in the US (and many other countries including in the EU who took notice) any time soon.

While i do respect the sentiment behind Snowden's leak, I do actually have a bone to pick with how it was executed. There were NSA leakers before him, there will hopefully be some after him that will speak out when a line is crossed. However grabbing which ever documents you can put your hands on, and then seeking shelter in what is now a defacto hostile state isn't really responsible behavior.

Just few years before Snowden we already had an NSA leak from which the "secret interpretation of the FISA act" fiasco was made public. Snowden could've made the same effective impact with a handful of slides, not 1000's of documents (if not more, some numbers which were flying in the early days of the leak pointed at anywhere between 50 and 250 thousands documents) of which many probably contain actionable information which i would dare to say puts the EU as a organisation, and you as an individual at more risk than anything the NSA will ever did or do.

not 1000's of documents [...] of which many probably contain actionable information which i would dare to say puts the EU as a organisation, and you as an individual at more risk than anything the NSA will ever did or do.

Fearmonger much?

So far my statistical risk to be killed in a train accident is significantly higher than being killed in a terrorist attack.

And somehow it has been this way since before the internet was even invented.

How did the internet make the terrorists suddenly so much more dangerous that we now need mass surveillance to defend against them?

What do terrorists have to do with anything? Nation states are far more likely to launch a cyber attack against the EU than a terrorist organisation.

And since when mass surveillance is a new thing? The US, some European allies, Russia and any other capable country were conducting mass surveillance since pretty much WW2 if not earlier. Tapping phone lines including the transatlantic phone cables since the 50's, opening millions of letters each year and far more.

Nations have always been spying on each other and on their people, I am not saying that this is right, and that it's justified in every case but it's the reality we've been living in since the middle of the 20th century if not during the entire recorded history.

But sure keep thinking that posting every document including ones that deal with operational aspects of the programme is justified. Next time when the EU decided to duke it out with Russia over the gas piplines and trade agreements it might find it self on the receiving end of such programmes far more hostile than the NSA tapping a Belgium ISP.

P.S. H/N Don't forget to bury this comment with down votes too since well screw the content rules, your political opinions and narrow world views are under attack.

P.S. 2.0

Just for the kick of it according to data from the ERA(European Railroad Agency) the total number of deaths in train accidents from 2000 is 319, number of people who died in terrorist attacks in during the same period in Europe is 338+(stopped counting once I've got pass 319..). Please note that this isn't the number of EU citizens who died in terror attacks(which is several times greater), but the number of casualties for attacks on European soil. Of course if you count the Madrid train bombings as a train accident you are welcomed to subtract 191 people of that list and add it to your get hit by a train statistic.

And since when mass surveillance is a new thing? [...] Countries were conducting mass surveillance since pretty much WW2

Since when are nukes a new thing? Countries have been going to war for centuries!

Can you see how absurd a notion that is?

The NSA will soon be able to record every move you make and every word you speak or write during your lifetime, in realtime. Not much later it will be able to do this for entire populations.

None of this has been possible until very recently. Conflating this kind of mass surveillance with the past practices of manually opening letters and wiretapping phones would be very naive.

About your PS 2.0...

Since you apparently still don't realise how completely irrelevant that number is; Twice as many people were killed by lightning strike in the same timeframe.

"The second report (rapport complÈmentaire d'activitÈs 1999) deals with the ECHELON system in much greater detail. It gives a view on the STOA study and devotes one section to explaining the technical and legal background to telecommunications monitoring. It concludes that ECHELON does in fact exist and is also in a position to listen in to all information carried by satellite."

"According to a former employee, NSA had by 1995 installed "sniffer" software to collect such traffic at nine major Internet exchange points (IXPs). The first two such sites identified, FIX East and FIX West, are operated by US government agencies. They are closely linked to nearby commercial locations, MAE East and MAE West (see table). Three other sites listed were Network Access Points originally developed by the US National Science Foundation to provide the US Internet with its initial "backbone"."

"...leading US Internet and telecommunications company had contracted with NSA to develop software to capture Internet data of interest, and that deals had been struck with the leading manufacturers Microsoft, Lotus, and Netscape to alter their products for foreign use. The latter allegation has proven correct (see technical annexe). Providing such features would make little sense unless NSA had also arranged general access to Internet traffic."

This is from the EU Parliamentary reports compiled in the mid to late 90's. You can find that and much more in the EU online library under "Temporary Committee on the ECHELON Interception System" and the SOTA reports...

Again not saying it's OK, but FFS this has been going on for a LONG LONG time, people really need to get some perspective and focus on what actually matters. The NSA won't stop "spying" it's what they are for, who and how actively they are doing it should be the main issue here.

On the PS part, well duh, the numbers are completely irrelevant it as was the arbitrary statistic about being in a train accidents vs terrorism. Bring up a dumb point get a dumber reprisal...

who and how actively they are doing it should be the main issue here

Yes, it absolutely is.

Yet for some reason you keep trying to defend their Orwellian ambitions with some handwavy "they have always been spying, it's their job"...

The NSA is not "spying" in the romantic sense that you seem to be caught up in.

It is installing global surveillance, a google index of all communications worldwide (ICREACH). This goes far beyond keyword sniffing on phonecalls or opening letters.

They are implementing the exact kind of surveillance that totalitarian regimes are condemned for (see e.g. the movie "The Lives of Others"), at an unprecedented scale.

And their justification is the defense against a "threat" that is less likely to harm you or me than a lightning strike.

If you can't see the blatant disproportion here, and the extreme concentration of power in an institution that has largely detached itself from democratic checks and balances, then you must really have paid not much attention to the Snowden revelations.

> there is nothing surprising about the US spying on the EU and vice versa

Yes, the comforting normality of the cold war between the US and everybody else. Just don't be surprised when US products and services become a target of widespread boycotts around the world.

The same newspaper reported that Germany's BND had active wire taps on 2 US secretaries of state, (Hillary) Clinton and Kerry, as well heavily spying on NATO members like Turkey.

Snowden's own documents showed many EU countries (including all of the enlightened Nordic ones) who actively supported the US spying in order to gain intelligence on their own citizens and on other EU members, heck Denmark joined the NSA programme to spy on freaking Belgium.

The harsh truth is that everyone spies, even Iceland has some dude in an office some where who's in charge of their intelligence gathering. The means and effectiveness vary between nations but considering that the UK, Germany and France have intelligence services which are considered amongst of the best in the world only a fool would write this off as some US fling due to post cold war PTSD.

You are living with blinders on if you don't think every state in the world has espionage programs for both offensive and defensive purposes.

You are living with blinders on if you expect the civilians most harmed by these programs to stay silent and subservient.

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